Andrew fell in love with electricity. His first kiss was white and sweet and
it numbed his whole body and fired his imagination. He was aware even then,
that his lover would have devoured him entirely if his mother hadn't
screamed and yanked his lips off of the wall socket.

Shaking and thanking Jesus that her baby was still alive, she placed his
small body on the sofa and covered him up to his chin with a crocheted
blanket. Her perfume mingled with the memory of that kiss, with the scratchy
feel of the couch and the singed taste that filled his mouth. These flavors
birthed an aroma that would elude exact replication and haunt him always
with the flickering desire to inhale it once again.

For his parents, the experience quickly blended into the weave of their
family's fabric. 'The time Andrew stuck his tongue in the socket' was
recounted to audiences at parties and gatherings until they had washed it
clean of their fear. It was the same thing they had done after his sister
fell out of the oak tree. 'Remember the time Lilly tried to climb up to the
moon?' they would say, chuckling.

But to him, in his secret moments alone, it remained the turning point of
his young life. To him, that kiss was the foundation upon which all of his
future experiences would build. He felt assured of this, day after day, just
as he felt the rhythm of his beating heart on his fingertips.

His yearning pressed him to learn everything that he could. As a lover
memorizes the habits of his beloved, he memorized the theories of
electronics, studied wiring, and memorized the patterns of electric current.
He looked at the toaster and the television set with new eyes, tracing their
lines into sockets and imagining the surging energy that filled them upon
request. He felt pricks of jealousy at the intimacy with which they could
mingle.

The curiosity of his desire led him to the local library. The more he read
the more questions he asked and this soon brought him to the attention of
his teachers. He received top grades in school and his parents were
predictably proud. His grandmother even put a bumper sticker on her 1978
Chrystler, so that everyone would know about her honor student grandson.
They all remembered the incident with the wall socket as one point of peril
in the raising of a regular healthy young boy. None of them suspected the
significance one event had had in the life of their only son.

Positive and negative current formed for him the structure of a religion. He
listened for her testament everywhere. As his own blood rang in his ears,
electricity hummed overhead and glowed in front of him on screens and bulbs,
through switches and lines. He wanted to stretch the copper of currency into
wire and pay her homage. He thought about his body, filled with water, and
of how that water could conduct her very touch. She was constantly around
him, and that knowledge urged his life forward with a momentous might.

As he grew up, enduring the confusion of adolescence, he carefully cloaked
his lust from the scrutiny of his peers. He began to see with more
democratic eyes; transforming the features of his love into the likenesses
of other's. He poured her out into smaller vessels, into forms more
acceptable to love. With age he began to rely upon the accolades of his
academic achievements to propel him, rather than the passionate fantasies of
his mind. And as she receded into the context of his childhood, he lost the
exactitude of remembrance, and time turned his heart to more relevant
subjects in the constant service of his survival.

He competed for scholarships in math and science, while keeping up with the
fads and fashions of his years. And as those years passed, he was required
to think much more about the details of his life, than of its meaning. He
remained fascinated with the currents of positives and negatives, but felt
himself to be far evolved from the boy who would tongue the socket just to
feel the kiss of energy that lay beneath. His original vice was carefully
dressed in worldly achievements, expectations and possibilities.

He was admitted to a highly acclaimed university where he continued with his
studies. Computers were the future, and as he mastered their language he
experienced the pleasure of an unexpected homecoming. He focused on his
work, excluding intimate relationships with individuals in exchange for
challenging new hours of research and he achieved much material success.

As his adult career blossomed he was kept increasingly busy with projects
and their management, spending less and less time in his own lab. He worked
tirelessly and was well respected but as success determined his position, he
found himself alone and at a standstill. He had become a teacher among
students and that left him little time for personal inquiry or research. He
began to lose the sense of excitement that had fueled his former work. The
achievements that he had been heralded for became more and more a part of
his past, a thing only to be remembered and nodded to from his pedantic
perch.

He was perplexed by this dilemma but kept up appearances, and soothed his
frustrations with a thinning balm of wealth and praise. He mimicked the
habits of those who surrounded him, those who professed to be happy with
their lives. And as he drifted through years in this manner, he averted his
eyes from the dark walls of the narrowing channel before him and kept his
back to the gnawing doubts that clustered around his mind.

One morning, he woke up feeling unusually agitated. He wasn't in the habit
of remembering his dreams, and so retained only a sense of what had
transpired during the night. He was disturbed by a recollection that in the
dream he had been deliriously happy, so now awake he felt the disaster of
having made a terrible mistake. The more alert he became, the more depressed
he felt. He showered and let the water wrap his skin like a warm blanket,
yet even there he could not shake the despair that became almost
overwhelming. Walking to work that day, he decided to take a longer route,
through the park.

Stopping to sit on a bench and finish his coffee, he watched joggers pass by
and birds gather together to forage for pastry crumbs at his feet. All of
the details of these scenes blurred against his mood. A woman sat down next
to him and began to sketch in a large black notebook. Her hair glinted in
the sunlight as it fell around her face and the vision drew him from his
reverie, just enough. He stole several glances at her and began to feel more
himself.

He spoke to her, wanting more of the feeling of solace. As they exchanged
words, their bodies angled unconsciously toward each other. She agreed to
have dinner with him, and one year later they were married.

He, like most, had for some time entertained the possibility that having a
family might bring him some satisfaction. The people around him had
families, and they all appeared to live happily enough. And so he had
pursued this course carrying the knowledge of it that he had gained on
television commercials and by watching other people proceed in kind. She had
always wanted children and when he showed signs of feeling similarly she was
thrilled, envisioning her life stretching out to old age with family photos
lining bookshelves and a fireplace to sit by late at night.

When they made love it was always pleasant, but afterward his mind would
fold in on itself, leaving his body vacant and unresponsive. He would
apologize with an exaggerated innocence she often thought charming when she
questioned him. She attributed, out loud as she calmed herself to sleep,
this distance of his to the advancement of his intellect, or the ineptitude
of his emotional awareness. He gratefully accepted any theory as he turned
over again to sleep.

She worked as the curator of a respected museum and mingled with many people
of fortune and fame. They attended more glamorous functions than he was
accustomed to, and she assisted him in choosing appropriate dress.The
glitter of it all entertained him and kept his moods at bay. She encouraged
him to relax and would bring champagne to bed and play music in the
afternoons. They seemed the perfect couple. She distracted him from his
doubts and diverted his attention.

Sometimes, alone in his office or just as he was drifting off to sleep, he
would get the strangest feeling that there was something that he urgently
had to do. It was the disquieting sense that there was something that he had
to find. He tried to think back, to remember what it was that could be
haunting him. But all that came was a single memory: the feeling of the
current charging through his limbs and smashing his two front baby teeth
into his tongue. He could almost smell the white sizzling dots that
surrounded his head and dazzled his senses. He considered possibly finding a
proper prescription.

His wife loved him. She encouraged him to remember his dreams with the hope
that he might become more emotionally present. She sensed that he was a
deeply passionate man and she continuously attempted to draw him out. She
held off having children, waiting for him to become more at ease with
himself, to become more comfortable. While his capacity for the rational had
potential to awe her, she wondered if it was not also a barrier to her. One
day on the phone with a friend, she likened his sequestered aloofness to the
bed of another woman. As soon as the words left her mouth, she saw clearly
the faithlessness of her position.

As the years passed, she accepted his preference for logic and they became
gradually more estranged. It was unnerving to her, the way in which he
coveted his core, the way he spoke of love with words that sounded scripted
and turned his back each time they finished making love. A month before
their seventh anniversary, she purchased a convertible Mustang and drove it
across the country to open up her own gallery in the fertile soil of
California .

It wasn't the silence in the house that bothered him so much. It was the
echo of a voice that called to him continuously. He heard her in the walls.
He saw her in his sleep. Even when he went out walking she was there. She
was everywhere and yet she was out of his reach.

He slept, draped over his keyboard with the monitor glowing and dreamt that
he was happy. The hours of his waking were fewer and fewer and he succumbed
to the desire for absolute solitude. Dust settled on his window ledge, and
take-out food containers cluttered the floor at his feet. One evening he
awoke and the dream stayed with him. After shutting off the power strip, he
put on his coat and walked outside.

He headed west up along the canal. the cars on the street nearby were
rushing and stopping and rushing and stopping. And then, there it was, just
up ahead, a doorway made of metal, a gate grand enough for heaven. He walked
across the street barely noticing a driver who was forced to hit the brakes
to let him pass.

He walked right up to the chain link. and smelled its wet steel in the air.
He could hear the loud hum of his siren's call with rapture growing in his
heart. Take me, he thought. He climbed over the fence, and approached the
snarl of metal and wire in front of him. It shed no light, but he could feel
each hair on his neck rising in answer, he could feel her whispering touch
on his skin at last.

His spread his arms to embrace the steel. his lips stretched out and the
electricity sprang forth to meet them before they reached the pole. It blew
his head back and entwined his body in an instant. His legs rattled and his
jaw sprung apart. His eyes melted open in a fury of white ecstasy. The
charge grabbed onto his own in a stranglehold and sucked the life from his
veins in one thundering boom. His heart burst with love and the wave
descended, devouring his flesh and withering his frame until there was
nothing left of it but the charred remains scattered about on the blackened
ground.

And so Andrew kissed his one true love goodnight.

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